SEOmoz is holding a search marketer's survey to get information about you. The winner can get an iPhone (or $400 to be spent at Amazon.com).
I just took the survey and the questions are quite interesting. A sampling of questions:
1. How many jobs have you held in the last 5 years?
2. What is your current position?
3. How many emails do you receive for work-related tasks in a given day?
4. How many feeds do you read?
and more.
It will be interesting to see what SEOmoz learns from the data!
A HighRankings Forum member wants to know if it's possible to rank well for competitive keywords without having inbound links.
The answer is no. As Randy points out:
Without any links at all pointing towards your site not only will it not rank very well, but it won't even stay in the index.
Tis the way of the web. The search engines expect people to link to things those people find to be of value. So if no one ever links to your site they make the (correct) assumption that it has no value to their users.
If there's no trust (and no links to the site), there's no reason why the search engines would consider it valuable to other users.
The best scenario is to look for relevant sites, not only because Matt Cutts says so but because you can get great traffic from it:
I've noticed in my own experience that the best links are obvious. Highly relevant, quality websites. You hear it over and over, but my reasoning for calling them the "best links" is not merely for Search Engine ranking help. The reason they're so good is you can see that these referring sites send good traffic.
So in the end, links matter. Relevant links are better.
Further, Bryson says that mobile users are looking for navigational options as opposed to the traditional sit-at-your-computer search where you may not know what you're looking for.
According to the classification, the mobile queries were overwhelmingly navigational in nature, with almost three quarters of the queries coming from users who already knew what they were looking for:
query intent percent of queries
informational 12%
navigational 73%
transactional 15%
The article concludes with some best practices, including:
Using navigational queries such as branded terms, competitor terms and names of known products as core keywords could lead to increased visibility in mobile search engines.
...[U]sers are looking for usable sites, [so] developing a mobile web site and including the term "mobile" in the copy as a secondary keyword could lead to increased visibility in mobile search engines.
The research is very detailed and incredibly in-depth. If you're going along the mobile route, it's a definite read for you.
Yesterday, CNet introduced that Yahoo is going to be supporting the OpenID standard for a "universal Internet log-in." The article claims that the biggest victor is not Yahoo but OpenID.
However, on WebmasterWorld, the concept of OpenID is irksome to many.
Oh, I can see it now, people don't use hard passwords...then the hackers can get it ALL in one fell swoop. That could be a disaster for many.
Not all feel this way, though. It's good to get a centralized system for password storage:
I dont think there is much of a safety issue here, most of the mainstream public use the same userId/password across different websites now anyway!...So why not legitimize (the practice) with a central userid provider (hopefully with a strict password requirement)
In any event, it's still great that Yahoo has taken this approach. You can access the OpenID program on Yahoo at http://openid.yahoo.com/.
You can still see some of the spam posts indexed in Google, with a search on site:vivalb55.googlegroups.com. Here is a screen shot, because Google has begun to clean up some of these accounts:
As you can see, users set up multiple accounts and then did tons of posts. Then some how they did a redirection from their post to their site. It still works if you use the cache link. For example, this cache link will redirect you to this site, which is on debt consolidation. The domain is registered at GoDaddy under a private registration, but the DNS information points to ULTRADNS.NET.
The form of redirection is via JavaScript that is currently live at http://www.parkonrails.com/lead.asp?id=55.
Googler, JohnMu, thanked everyone for reporting it and said it will be taken care of. It seems like a lot of those accounts have already been removed, and that Google is still removing the spam from their index. John said:
Thanks for bringing this issue up. I've passed it on to the team. In general, if the group had normal postings, you could use the "Report this message" link (under "More Options") to report things like this. In cases like this where there are no postings to report (but where the group clearly abuses our terms of service), you can send an email to abuse @ googlegroups.com providing the information that you have.
It is hard for me to link to just one thread with discussion on how it appears Google is paying less and less this month to their AdSense publishers. But there is one huge WebmasterWorld thread with pages and pages of posts, starting in the middle of this month and still containing a lot of steam with upset publishers.
Overall, many publishers have noticed a drop in earnings reported throughout the month by Google AdSense. There are dozens of other threads with similar complaints across forums and sites.
Some publishers have said their earnings are flat or up from the previous month but most are reporting a drop in earnings.
I figured I do my own poll and see what the Search Engine Roundtable readers are noticing:
A Sphinn thread has discussion on if an SEO is worth $350 per hour. The Sphinn thread is an off branch of a blog post that portrays an SEO who seems to not be such a great SEO but is yet able to charge $350 per hour for a minimum of 2000 hours per year. Yes, that turns out to be $700,000 per year, before taxes.
In this case, it appears that the SEO consultant is getting away without providing that much value to his client. It is hard to tell for sure, because we only see a small snap shot of one specific meeting but it just seems that way from the blog post.
In any event, are any SEOs out there worth $350 per hour? I believe so. But at what point. I am not sure I know many SEOs who charge $350 per hour with a 2000 hour commitment. Normally, an SEO with such a huge commitment will come down on price - i.e. more hours, less per hour. An SEO can drive an incredible amount of relevant and converting traffic to a site. Yes, it can be worth much more than $700,000 per year for a client.
So how much are SEOs worth? Is it industry dependent? Is it skill dependent?
Here is a poll. How much would you pay a top top SEO, if you couldn't do it yourself?
A WebmasterWorld has several reports from non-US based site owners saying their rankings in the main USA based Google.com has dropped from the first page to page five or beyond. This is not just one report from people complaining, there are even those with US based sites who are delighted about the apparent change in how Google handles non-US based sites (i.e. not hosted in the US or containing a foreign TLD).
Here are some negative reports from the thread:
One week ago the site ranked again in top 10 for the USA visitors. It lasted for 3 days and then it dropped again to #60+ only in the USA. It still ranks in top 10 for the same terms in all other countries.
For example my site ranks #6 on google.com for the UK IP addresses and it ranks #56 on google.com for the USA IP addresses for the same search terms.
Here is a happy report from the thread:
All I can say is FINALLY! Our sector had been dominated by .co.uk and .au sites for ages - absolutely useless to US and Canada users, as none of the companies sell in these countries.
The changes I'm seeing are all .co.uk and .au sites (previously 6 out of 10 were of these extensions), are gone in google.com, but show in google.co.uk.
Can't make everyone happy, can you? These reports started trickling in about two days ago, on January 29th. About the same time I reported that Google began implementing the geotarget data from Google Webmaster Tools.
Why is Yahoo having such a hard time? According to Roger Montti, it's because they are unable to attract teens and young adults. They also are taking in more money but are turning less profit.
Is Yahoo going to go down for good? No, forum members don't think so.
I think Yahoo has lots going for it with regards to content. It has the best email -- way better than Gmail or MSN Hotmail. The New version of the Yahoo mail (I pay for mine yearly and get the premium).
I was watching MSNBC the other night and they were talking about Y Answers and you keep hearing about their OMG site. I think its a great time to invest in Yahoo while their stock is down.
Y! is not going anywhere.
Google is Yahoo's biggest competition. And Yahoo needs to up their game, according to others:
The problem with Yahoo isn't that they soley need something new or some updates, its that they need to do something to actively shore up their % of users, right now google is pickpocketing them. Then they need to start actively competing with google, taking their users.
Kevin Heisler of Search Engine Watch and I crossed paths on Monday night at a NYC Advertising Meetup. (Unfortunately, we didn't actually see each other.)
But Kevin blogs about what they discussed, which includes bar codes on print ads (which can tie in traditional media with tracking for online advertising) and audio/TV advertising.
Here's an example barcode:
None of these technologies has taken off, but Kevin Heisler says that this is all part of the Google Ecosystem, and you can evolve or die out. We've seen Google TV market ads about 9 months ago and taught you how to set up print ads, but this is a whole new ballgame.
The Microsoft adCenter blog has announced that it has partnered with the Wall Street Journal for offering exclusive advertising content.
We're pleased to announce that on Tuesday, January 29, 2008, Microsoft and The Wall Street Journal Digital Network reached an agreement in which Microsoft will become the exclusive provider of contextual and paid search ads for The Wall Street Journal Digital Network (WSJDN), which includes WSJ.com, Barrons.com, Marketwatch.com, allthingsd.com along with other sites.
What this means: Microsoft will partner with the Wall Street Journal and any advertisers using Microsoft adCenter ContentAds will now get their ads on the highly-trafficked Wall Street Journal.
This is very promising, according to some.
I always like seeing "positive" Microsoft news. I'll have to say that MS have been "kicking it up a notch" over these past 90-120 days. TV advertising appears to be stepped up and earnings reports are good.
I'm rootin' for ya MS. We need some balance in our space and between you, Yahoo! and Ask.com, you're all we have left. :)
A new tool called Link Diagnosis has been released that allows you to examine your competition. The tool uses the Yahoo! API and according to Patrick Altoft who posted it to Sphinn, it's one of the "best link analysis tools I've seen."
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. There are a few bugs (this is brand new), but that's to be expected.
I have been running some tests on it and I really like the information it provides. I have experienced a few errors, which is to be expected, and I assume they will get straightened out. All in all I like what I see from it so far.
The findings can then be downloaded to CSV. Very cool.
Reports are coming from Google Groups and WebmasterWorld that Google AdSense will be issuing two Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) transmissions to canadian publishers, who use the EFT, this month.
AdSensePro Jordan explained that there was an "issue with January EFT payments to Canadian publishers." An email was sent to those publishers who were impacted by the issue, the email reads:
We're writing to let you know about an issue with your January AdSense
payment. The full amount of your most recent Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) payment was not transmitted all at one time. Therefore, it will be issued in two EFT transactions. Within the next few days, you'll receive the first payment, which is the bulk of the amount you're owed. You may have already received this payment. The remaining amount will be sent in a separate transaction later this week.
During this time, you may happen to see messaging that your account is on hold and you'll be prompted to select a new form of payment. Rest assured this is a normal part of the process and we kindly ask that you do not make any such changes until both these payments have been finalized.
Your Payment History page in your AdSense account will show the following over the next few days:
1) A 'Payment issued' line posted on January 25, 2008 calculated in USD. (If you click on the 'details' link next to this line you'll find this payment was calculated with an exchange rate of 0.981.)
2) An 'EFT not successful - earnings credited back' line has posted today, January 29, 2008. This doesn't mean that your EFT was unsuccessful; it's only displayed to balance the amounts within your AdSense account. Again, during this time, you may happen to see messaging that your account is on hold and you'll be prompted to select a new form of payment. Rest assured this is a normal part of the process and we kindly ask that you do not make any such changes until both these payments have been finalized.
3) Then, a 'Payment issued' line will also be posted, for the actual USD amount of the initial deposit that was sent to your account today, January 29, 2008. (If you click on the 'details' link for this payment you'll find this payment was calculated with an exchange rate of 1.030.)
4) Followed by an additional 'Payment issued' line which has posted today, January 29, 2008 when this additional payment is processed for the remaining amount that you are due. (If you click on the 'details' link for this payment you'll find this payment was calculated with an exchange rate of 1.030.) The sum of these two last 'Payment issued' lines will reflect the correct amount of your payment. So soon, your Payment History page will appear something like the following example:
Jan 25 Payment issued (US $100.00) Jan 29 EFT not successful - earnings credited back US $100.00 Jan 29 Payment issued (US $96.00) Jan 29 Payment issued (US $4.00)
Please be assured that the remainder of your payment will be deposited into your account soon.
Once again, we appreciate your patience as we work to fix the error.
When Yahoo Publisher Network publishers try going to the YPN Portal, they are now presented with a security prompt. If you look closely at that error, it says that their secure certificate has expired.
It expired a day ago. I guess Yahoo is trying to cut costs wherever they can, including security. Of course I am kidding. Often companies forget to renew their security certificates. I am sure it will be resolved shortly and I am sure the site is still secure, it just doesn't have the Equifax seal of approval.
Search Engine Watch Forums moderator, abbottsys, is on a roll. Today, he posted some early results on a test ad he was playing with. He took the headline from his best working ad, and placed the headline in the description lines. For example, let's say his headline was RustyWords, the ad would look like this in Google:
You see, he placed his best converting AdWords ad headline into the headline, description line 1 and description line 2. Then placed the ad live and began tracking all the metrics.
Guess what, so far, the early results match the results of his best running ad.
His early findings:
The bogus ad has matched the real ad in terms of clicks, CTR and conversions. In short, its performance is superb.
If he can replicate these results across multiple ad sets and over a longer period of time then AdWords professionals need to begin scratching their heads.
Of course, the headline text might be so good that repeating it screams to searchers. Testing this in a lower converting ad might reproduce the same results or not. It would be interesting to test this AdWords tactic out a bit more and see more results.
A Search Engine Watch Forums moderator asked why are Google's 404 Not Found pages so cold and unhelpful?
For example, there is no page on the Google domain over here so Google returns a header status of 404, to tell us and spiders that the page requested is not found on that server. But from what we all know, 404 pages, although sad in nature, can be salvaged.
But creating custom 404 pages, you can help aid your user to find the page he or she was looking for. Google's 404 pages look like this:
Why not put some of the Google Products on the page with a big search box and some sponsored listings? It has to be more useful then what Google has now.
How are Google's 404 pages helping organize the content of the world? I wonder if there is a strategic reason behind why Google may use plain vanilla 404 pages. I can make up some reasons, but I am interested if we can possibly get a plausible explanation from a Googler on this?
SphinnCon Israel has officially sold out today. In fact, we added 15 additional seats, increasing our capacity to 165 people from our original 150 people. I apologize to all those that did not get to come to the first ever SphinnCon and the first ever sudo-SMX event in Israel, but there is always next year! One thing is for sure, we know there is real interest and support for such an event in Israel - which makes me incredibly happy and proud.
Here is our revised speaker list: SEO Panel
Branko Rihtman, SEO Specialist at Tens Technology (Presenter)
I have to thank the sponsors who stepped up to be part of the first SphinnCon Israel. Sponsoring this event not only made it possible for us to financially pull this all together but also shows how giving the SEM community is worldwide. It is a true honor to have these local Israeli companies be such a big part of the SphinnCon Israel event. The sponsors include:
Also, we have a free venue, free! The Department of Technological Management and Marketing at the Jerusalem College of Technology has given us a large large class room and lobby to host the event.
Thank you all for sponsoring!
Now for the mushy girly part. When the concept of such a social networking event was first drawn up, there were a few individuals in the Israeli SEM community who stood up and decided to help in so many ways. I wanted to specifically mention each of them by name. Each of these people helped organize this event for me and the SEM Israel community and they all deserve our deepest gratitude. I cannot express how much time, leg work, negotiating, diplomacy and all the stuff that goes into making an event like this work - went into this SphinnCon Israel. I personally thanked each one over here, with additional comments on Sponsors as well. But here is the list of individuals that deserve a mention, in alphabetical order:
Michael Barnett
Eli Feldblum
Roi Hildesheimer
Gilad Sasson
Mayer Reich
Branko Rihtman
Like I said earlier, I wrote a personal thank you to all these people and companies at my personal blog. But they deserve kudos here as well.
For $50 each person, I think the real winners will be the attendees. The presentations look outstanding. I personally prepared a 15 minute introduction, in Apple Keynote, so that should be cool. Now instead of me covering a search conference, I will try to help run one. Should be interesting.
SlightlyShadySEO wrote an interesting blog post about how you can look at things that no longer work in terms of SEO and use what you've learned to avoid making mistakes that will cause penalties. Here's what he's found from his own observations:
Here's one example about paid links. Beforehand, you could directly solicit for links, use link brokers, and pay for blog posts. SlightlyShadySEO says that there's still doubt about how Google filtered these sites and alludes the penalties to manual reports. If you want to avoid this filter, start doing everything privately from relevant sites.
Other tactics related to link spamming and link farms are also discussed with the was to circumvent the filter. This is a good read.
Last week, Jonathan Simon posted on Google Groups about the questions and answers he received while at Las Vegas Pubcon 2007. For reference, here are some of the questions and answers that were discussed.
Google recommends that if you're already getting a lot of visibility with PPC, you should still make your site search-engine friendly. As Jonathan says, "don't just roll the dice, make it a sure bet."
SEO focus for Large Sites
If you have a huge site, focus on SEOing the entire site, not just some core pages.
Reputation Monitoring
To be informed of mentions of your company, subscribe to Google Alerts or to an RSS feed of Google's blogsearch for your particular search phrase.
Additional questions and answers are provided. The full read and discussion is at Google Groups.
Jeff Quipp over at Search Engine People has started a funny blog post about search spammers. His post, entitled "You might be a search spammer if...." has hit the front page of Sphinn and caused a lot of chuckles. Here are some of the items on the list:
You know what a Markov Chain is
you use an image editor to write your emails
you think of him as “Matt Cutts Me Out”
Surprisingly, there are a lot of people who can identify with these tactics! Do you?!
Shoemoney blogged that Google AdSense might be running a paid reviews service in the near future. The email is unconfirmed and there's no comment from the Google AdSense team yet, but forum members are already suspecting that it's going to happen.
The question is: how? If the rumor is true, will Google require "nofollow" on all these links? (You'd think so.) How about redirected URLs? (Possibly.)
People still find it funny:
haha about time google will clearly state they're selling links.
I'm thinking this email has little credibility (just like Jeremy does), but it would be interesting to see if Google ends up monetizing on something that people want and need.
Typically with Yahoo updates, the results initially look out of place and some listings seem a bit awkward. Towards the end of the update, results stop moving around and results begin to set in their place.
WebmasterWorld's senior member, BillyS said:
As of yesterday things seemed to have settled down. It looks like we might be at steady state now.
Googler, JohnMu, wrote in a Google Groups thread that links from EDU domains are not in itself better links than .com or .net links. John said:
In general, I would like to add that no, backlinks from .EDU domains generally do not get "additional credibility from Google"
I believe this may be one of the first times we have official confirmation in writing from a Google representative that EDU links are not anymore valuable then other types of links.
Sebastiancommented to let me know that Matt Cutts of Google has confirmed at Sphinn that whatever was causing quality sites to be moved down to the 6th position in the Google search results, is now being reversed. Matt said:
When Barry asked me about "position 6" in late December, I said that I didn't know of anything that would cause that. But about a week or so after that, my attention was brought to something that could exhibit that behavior. We're in the process of changing the behavior; I think the change is live at some datacenters already and will be live at most data centers in the next few weeks.
In general if you think a site might have a penalty (perhaps from past behavior) and you think the site is clean presently, you can do a reconsideration request in our webmaster console to ask Google to take another look at the site.
I just love it when the SEO community's communication helps Google notice these things and make changes based on our feedback. I should really go back and document each and every time Google has made changes based on SEO community feedback.
In any event, if you were impacted by this penalty - you don't have to do anything, as I thought. Just wait it out and Google should take care of the issue on their side.
Mobile web advertising is the next big thing, according to a Reuters report on a speech by Eric Schmidt.
Forrester suggests that mobile advertising will only be less than $1 billion by 2012. But Schmidt disagrees, citing that the mobile advertising platform will boom in the upcoming years. Indeed, speculation about mobile advertising is already ongoing and is likely to continue.
Forum members suspect that Schmidt is right. Mobile advertising is predicted to take off. Some, though, don't want mobile ads. (They're likely the same people who didn't want ads on websites at all about 10-15 years ago. Things change.)
And others are already seeing ads, such as AdSense, on their iPhone and other similar devices, and these sites are not optimized for mobile usage. So it's a matter of first getting your site optimized for mobile phones and then constructing your ads in such a way so that mobile phone users will not find it to be an issue.
A HighRankings Forum thread discusses the possibility that Google themes sites. That is, Google groups sites together because of the relevancy of the link. So, for example, if you got 300 links to your blue widget site from a bunch of humor sites, wouldn't Google think that the blue widget site is actually about humor (and not so much about blue widgets)?
If you do a Google search for related:www.mysite.com and find similar sites, wouldn't that be theming?
As Randy says, "[I]t's more than just about the words on the page. You'd also need to factor a broader range of linking relationships between multiple sites into the equation."
Ian McAnerin mentions that the related: search operator doesn't really theme sites as we'd expect. It's based on the type of backlinks received.
However, in the end, people agree that some sort of theming exists:
I think Google does actually Theme sites. This may split a site as covering a number of related themes.
The discussion spans three pages (so far) and there appears to be no end in sight. What are your thoughts on Google's "theming?" Share your thoughts at HighRankings Forum.
Last week, DazzlinDonna wrote an open letter to Matt Cutts asking him why her PageRank has been impacted when she's already removed all wording to the effect of accepting paid links and submitted a reinclusion request. John Honeck writes about how the events unfolfed, which basically went something like this: Donna wrote the post, it got Sphunn, Matt saw and commented with some proposed changes, Donna responded and made the changes, and other people started chiming in. (On that note, Matt, look at my site. I submitted a request twice!)
John's proposed solution is something that already seems to exist (from my experience), but he lists it as follows:
Site owner fixes site and submits a reconsideration request.
Google reviews the site and finds some outstanding violations.
Google sends a message back in the site owners webmaster’s tools message center saying, “We have received and reviewed your request for consideration. Unfortunately at this time we are unable to act on your request due to continued possible violations of our Webmaster Guidelines. Please feel free to review the Webmaster’s Guidelines, make any changes that you find appropriate and resubmit your reconsideration request”
Site owner digs deeper and sends in request.
Google responds with another note, “We have received and reviewed your request for consideration. It appears that your site is now within our guidelines.”
The one concern is point #3 which, because there are no responses from the Google Webmaster Team (at least from my experience once again), there's no way to really determine if the request has been actually investigated. So John's solution would clear up the conception that the Google Webmaster Team isn't listening or looking.
John ends up saying that it's just a fair thing for everyone. I agree.
Having Matt Cutts be the voice of Google out there writing on his own blog, commenting on people’s sites, and occasionally penning something on the official webmaster’s blog is great and wonderful for the community that watches that sort of thing. I just believe that those people are a small subset of the actual webmaster population and the majority should not be at a disadvantage because they don’t subscribe to the right feeds.
(Though, John, Matt has not taken me seriously at least 3 times--at least!--and I know he reads this blog!)
What do you think? Is communication closed? Should the reinclusion procedure be a lot more communicative, at least to the point of the Google Webmaster Team acknowledging receipt of the messages and stating that they are unable to make changes at this time?
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn. (Oh and Matt, I'm looking at you.)
On WebmasterWorld, AnalyticsAdvisor has volunteered to spend some time helping webmasters answer questions regarding Google Analytics. Apparently, this guy knows what he's talking about and is deeply involved in the Analytics sphere:
AnalyticsAdvisor would post as time allowed - hopefully checking in with this forum at least once a day (Monday through Friday) to see if there are Google Analytics related questions on the table. [snip]
This colleague is deeply involved with Google Analytics, and is genuinely passionate about helping advertisers learn to use it more effectively. He is a long term user of Analytics himself - having used the product for more than 6 years, starting back in the day when it was known as Urchin. He knows Analytics inside and out, and he knows how to listen to advertisers.
The question is being well-received by forum members and you should look forward to asking your Google Analytics questions (and getting answers) on WebmasterWorld.
Sadly, it is not uncommon to hear of a site that has recently been hacked. Google frequently has to deal with sites that get hacked and code gets injected into the site. If that happens, Google sometimes has to delist the site from showing in their index, because it harms the quality of their search results.
So what does Google recommend? Googler, Berghausen, gave one user this advice:
You're running Apache. Check all your .htaccess files for code that doesn't belong there. Get rid of it.
Look for scripts [usually php] that you did not write. Get rid of those, if you can. Sometimes permissions get hacked in unfriendly ways, so you may need to contact your host for help. Make sure to look for hidden files and files whose names start with ., too.
Call your webhost and have them check the directories above your site for sketchy files if you are on virtual hosting.
If you are running a CMS, image gallery, forum, or any other open source CGI application on your site, make sure it's up to date. Hackers often take advantage of known security holes in open source software by attacking sites that have not kept their CMS up to date.
You're also running cpanel. Have your host make sure it too is up- to-date. cPanel hacks can be nigh impossible to clean up with normal login permissions, so you will almost assuredly need your host's help to get rid of the injected scripts if this is the case.
The other week, I accused Google of skimming their affiliates, well, I was only half wrong. Google simply was displaying broken referral reports that made it look like Google was taking money away from their referral users.
A Google Groups thread confirms the issue was a "display" issue with reporting and has now been fixed.
Official Google representative, AdSensePro Ashley, said:
In our recent 'follow-up' post on the changes to referrals promoting AdSense, Talia noted that we were aware that recent referrals conversions were not appearing in some publishers accounts. As mentioned in this post, this was a display error, and past conversions were not removed from your accounts.
Please note that these conversions are now displaying correctly in your accounts again.
So the numbers should look accurate now and Google is really not skimming you guys.
Google Webmaster Central launched the ability to set the "geographic target" of a particular site within Google Webmaster Tools back in late October of last year. We have been gleaning hints and tips on if it works and how well it works from the forum threads since.
A recent WebmasterWorld thread reports that it can take up to 6-8 weeks after setting your geographic target for Google to pick up on the change and implement it through to the country specific level.
Here is a quote from the individual who tested this out:
I've domain.com hosted in US for years. (PR6) No connection with UK apart from natural incoming anchor text containing "UK + kw." Domain.com is now ranking highly on "UK-only results" on G.co.uk. Until now, you either needed a .co.uk domain or UK hosting to be listed on "UK-only results". However, the recent country targeting in the Webmaster Tools was set to "UK" about 2 months ago but I didn't spot the SERPs change until now.
Conclusion A: You can now host anywhere with any domain and will appear in Google's "country-only" SERPs within 6-8 weeks.
But at the same time, he found that if you have a .com and a .fr or something else, it can hurt you not to use the select geotarget feature. Why? Because the .com can begin to automatically be set by Google to do well only in the country specific results and then the .fr will be overshadowed by the .com. The only way around that, in these cases, appears to be to set the .com for US and the .fr for France, as an example.
I am personally going to be testing this out with a couple clients soon, so I hope to be able to add my two cents within a few months.
Looking for pizza in New York? Well, Google thinks that three results are simply not enough, you need 10.
Yes, it is now official, Greg Sterling's Google Maps: From "OneBox" To Ten Local Links has the official word on the ten local results. Google will now show ten links instead of three for the local results. Why?
Google said today that the reason it's showing more links is because usability testing revealed that many people didn't realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings, despite the "more results . . ." prompt. Accordingly, Google said that with the 10 links it is hoping to signal people that there is much more local content a click away.
A WebmasterWorld thread is now going back and forth on if this is good for SEOs or not. One person says "the party is officially over," while someone quickly responds, "exactly the opposite." Which is it? It depends on how good you are at local optimization.
For more tips and discussion on this new Google Local web search integration, join the discussion.
Lego is celebrating their 50th birthday and Google is celebrating the day by sporting a Google Lego Logo:
Google has been fascinated with legos, heck, check out more Google Lego logos here. Google's original Google servers were covered in Legos, there are tons of pictures of those lego servers here. And this TIME interview with the Google founders that says the founders have a "known fondness" for legos.
TGIF! I can't believe how excited I am that it's the weekend. This week has been one heck of a rollercoaster. For more information, read this. Or this. :)
But enough about that. Let's talk about other interesting things that occurred this week.
Martin Luther King Day
Monday was Martin Luther King Day, and we celebrated with a theme done by one of the newest additions to the RustyBrick team, Mabe. What do you think?
Yahoo Brings Social to Search Results
Yahoo is testing del.icio.us tags in search results. Barry thinks this is a bad idea. His argument is that people won't understand it. Well, if they don't understand it, why not teach them? I think this is a good way to do it.
Customize Your Ask.com Homepage
You can now customize your Ask.com homepage with skins of your choosing. Consider it desktop wallpaper for Ask.com. Barry has a nice cartoon picture of himself on his Ask.com page and it's pretty sleek. I like.
Barry uses a cool Photoshop trick to show that some advertisers are taking vanity ads way too far. It's not a real ad but he says "Some want to own it all and become synonymous with the product line they are selling." When has an advertiser crossed the line?
Google may look to improve domain park ads by forcing domain names to more than 5 days old to be accepted into the domain park program. That might impact domainers a lot, but some people will see it as a welcome change.
Google Wants Your Health Records
It appears that Google is going to want you to store your health records online. Would you do it? We polled the audience and 59% of the respondents said that they would not like Google having their health information. Twenty-nine percent said yes. Seventeen percent was not sure. The question I propose to the 59%: what are you hiding? :)
Check Your Wordpress
If you're a Wordpress.com blogger, you may want to check that Google is spidering your Wordpress site. Some webmasters report that Wordpress is blocking search engines. Oops.
Should You Trust Google?
Tad Chef started a controversy on why you shouldn't trust Google. But many people say that it's not just Google that is the culprit. Personally, I have no comment. Stop asking me, people. :)
Would You Rather have an Old Link or a New Link?
Does Google value older links or newer links? We don't know but we can suspect. So when we polled you guys on whether you'd prefer old links over new links, you told us what you'd rather have: the winner was old links with 70 votes. Only thirty-six of you wanted newer links.
Demographic Bidding Returns to Google
If you're a Google AdWords advertiser, you may be aware that Google has relaunched demographic bidding. This means that you can price your ads based on who is viewing it from age to gender information.
Can You Hide Links on Pages that Search Engines Shouldn't Crawl?
An ongoing debate is happening that discusses whether it's ethical to hide links on pages that search engines are asked not to crawl. My question is: why not? I still don't understand why anyone would do this, but the argument is that it's a "creative issue." It doesn't make too much sense to me, but hey, if search engines aren't crawling it, it's not skewing the results and I think it's fair game. Just don't make me click on a link by accident.
What SEO Tools do You Use?
Do you use a lot of SEO tools? Recently, SEOs shared what's in their toolbox, and you can learn from them. What's in your SEO toolbox?
Our Video: On Hold
Woohoo! Since I don't like video, I'm so glad that Barry isn't doing it today! Actually, he asked me to tell you that he's in a meeting right now, and the following two Fridays, he's in Israel for SphinnCon and a variety of other cool things (I'm super jealous), so video will resume on site on February 15th. You'll all have to suffer through my more interesting commentary. YES!
Update Barry: Ha, I had time to do a quick, 3 minute, video on this recap. So... In your face Tamar! I know, no video for the next two Fridays, that is because I am off to SphinnCon next Friday and won't be back for about ten days. So live it up but in three weeks, I am back!
What would you do if you saw hundreds of links on a website, with much of those being in the footer? Is that a natural surfing experience? Would Google penalize you for these links?
The penalty might not be the issue, actually. Tedster says that you should minimize the number of your links to preferably under 100. He also adds that it is probably not so much of a penalty but it's an issue of relevancy:
I don't think its really a penalty -- more like all that anchor text on a page sort of blurs or dulls the relevance signal, and too much internal linking can also make it difficult for the algo to tell which pages are most important.
Be careful with your linking in general. Ted adds:
Eliminating, or lowering the number of internal links in the footer is worth a try. Also note if there are many repetitions of an important keyword in the anchor text anywhere on the page. When that's done to excess, it does seem like it hurts rather than helps.
Not all folks agree (though I'm inclined to side with Ted on this one). One forum member has had luck with his 900 links:
I have ALL my links in the front page; 900 or so in a css menu that activates when they highlight a certain category. My traffic increased and all pages are in the index
Still, that could be due to other factors. Ultimately, what are you using your footer links for? A sitemap or not-so-relevant pages (like your privacy policy, etc.?)
Stoney DeGeyter has written over at Search Engine Guide that not every client needs SEO. Sometimes the usability needs to be tackled first. Using an analogy, he explains that your website is like a restaurant. If the restaurant isn't accessible, people might not hang around. He drives the point home with:
By fixing usability issues you can sell more while without having to spend a lot of money always trying to bring in a lot of new traffic. A little goes a long way. Once you are able to increase your conversion rates, every dollar you spend on marketing and SEO will be more effective and have a much bigger impact on your profit margins.
This is important because not everyone is ready to embrace a search engine marketing campaign if they're not able to make their website more usable. This is true for PPC as well, as echoed on Sphinn:
Excellent point! I see the same problem (maybe even more of a problem) with those looking to do PPC. Companies want to advertise via Adwords but have a site that clearly will not work in paid search.
So here's the suggestion as proposed by Search Engine Guide: make a usable website first, and then focus on search marketing.
Last week, we introduced the SEMMYs, Matt McGee's awards for his favorite blog posts. Well, folks, the judges' votes are in and you can now vote for the best of the best. Matt explains the voting procedure on his blog.
For a list of finalists, go to the SEMMYs website and cast your vote. There are 15 different surveys from which to vote, so at the minimum, choose the two where I appear as a finalist.(Viral Marketing and Analytics). ;)
A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks what is the keyword limit per campaign within the Yahoo Search Marketing ad marketplace?
Based on the YSM help section, you can have up to 1,000 keywords per ad group and up to 20 ads. But we learn an additional item from the thread. It appears that when you initially add the ad group, you can only add 500 keywords at that time. Then after you save your ad group, you can add an additional 500 keywords to reach the 1,000 keyword limit.
Time and time again, we see complaints form advertisers and searchers that Google's domain park program is costing them time and money. Google's domain park is a way for domainers to monetize their inactive domains, by placing Google ads on the page, for searchers to then click on when they land on that page. Many advertisers dislike them and prefer to opt out of them and many searchers who land on these pages are frustrated. But Google loves them because they bring in a nice amount of ad revenue for the company.
There are now rumors that Google is adding a new policy to the domain park ads. The policy will require a domain name to be older than 5 days old for them to be accepted into the program. There is a ton of discussion building up on this rumor at Techmeme.
A WebmasterWorld thread says this change is going to kill domainers. Moderator, Webwork, said, "$70-$80 million later (2+ years at $3M/month). If Google won't touch it then will Yahoo? Stay tuned."
The "health" term has been buzzing around Google for a long long time now. We believe something on the health side of things is going to be announced at Google in early 2008, which is anytime now.
Google Blogoscoped captured a screen image of the Google Health login page, which showed the features that may be available in Google Health. FYI, the login page no longer contains the details of features, but here they are in bullet format:
Build online health profiles that belong to you
Download medical records from doctors and pharmacies
Get personalized health guidance and relevant news
Find qualified doctors and connect to time-saving services
Share selected information with family or caregivers
A Search Engine Watch Forums thread asks if it will be tied into AdWords? Maybe based on a Google accounts profile, we know someone has a certain medical condition. Why not target that person based on his condition with medicine or doctors that appeal to that user. Google has relaunched a new form of demographic bidding that allows one to bid on gender and age within the content network - why not bid on disease or medical records also?
Of course, I am far reaching here. The privacy advocates would go nuts. But it is possible and conceivable that this can happen.
We're very interested in working on products in the area of health, and we've been blogging and speaking publicly about this for some time. While we have no additional information to share right now, we hope to in the future.
Would you put your medical information and history on Google? Here is a poll:
A Cre8asite Forums member tells us his client is about to leave him for another company. The reason is because this other company claims to be a "Google partner" and proved so through a letter they received for participating in, what appears to be, the Google Video upload program.
The Cre8asite Forum member claims that this other company came in, pointing to a letter from Google that they host on their web site proudly. The letter reads:
On behalf of Google Video, I'd like to commend [Company Name] for being an early adopter to the terms of the distribution of video content online. We're happy to host your videos in our index and make them accessible to a worldwide audience, resulting in greater visibility for [Company Name] and the subjects of your video.
I look forward to continuing this relationship into 2006 and beyond.
Regards,
George Strompolos, Google Video
To be fair, it appears that all this company is doing is saying they will help them get ranked well in the Google organic results with a Google Video result for their company name. Now that is not too hard. But the thread claims this company is using the "partnership" with Google as the selling point. Google, as we know, was eagerly pushing the video upload program, see Search Engine Journal's write up on that. Dated in 2005, Google did not yet own YouTube and was trying to play catch up. They did what they could to encourage people to upload videos directly to Google Video. Now, since they own YouTube, it is a different story.
The thread asks if the company who is pitching the Google partnership bit being unethical.
A High Rankings Forum member had a chat with a snakeoil salesman who promised to guarantee 3000 searches a month for a client's particular niche. How is this possible without using some shady tactics?
Numerous possibilities arise. They could just be using "over-inflated Overture numbers," as forum administrator Jill Whalen explains. Moderator Randy says that it could just be numbers generated from collecting AdWords impression data. You could also get an idea about the number of searches (though nobody is sure how accurately) through Google Trends.
What, then, could it be? After the forum member actually spoke with the company, he learned that it has nothing to do with these numbers: instead, it's about PPC ads.
As I understand it, the sponsored links above the organic results are PPC just like the PPC on the right hand side - please correct me if I'm wrong. The sales rep from this company told me that they pay £xxx,xxx per month to Google, who guarantee x number of slots in these ads for any keyphrases they choose. This is not PPC and the customer pays £20 per month per keyword, regardless of whether it gets 1 click or 1,000,000 clicks.
After the first month (which has a compulsory number of 5 keyphrases) Google issues metrics and the customer can view these to decide if they want more, less or even no keyword adverts at all for the following month(s)
Is it worth the hassle? Not so much. Jill says that it "[s]ounds like they are simply repackaging Google AdWords." And I'm inclined to agree.
What happens if you link to the same page twice on one page with different anchor text? Does Google devalue the link at all? This question is asked on Cre8asite Forums.
I have 2 identical links on same page but with different anchor text. I know google will retain only one link for page rank, but I would like to know if the second anchor text will reduce the importance of the first anchor text (for keywords).
You really need not worry about this, says another member. There's no way to assume that the algorithm will penalize you at all.
How do you know google will only retain 1 link for page rank? Assume nothing!
However in answer to your question, there is no problem with having more than one link pointing to a specific page.
You may not know if your rankings will be impacted, but it doesn't appear from tests that these rankings have been negatively impacted.
Yesterday, at about 10AM Eastern Time, reports came in that Google News search was not working. Barry reports that he also had downtime with Google News yesterday, and four other users also announced that it impacted them. The problem was that the result pages were blank.
Four hours later, Google News Guide 2 announced that the problem had been fixed.
While the problem seems to be fixed (Google News works for me), another member reports that it is still not coming up with results. Hopefully, the problem will be fixed fully within the next few hours.
Ask.com announced the launch of a feature I have been waiting for since Ask 3D launched. You can now upload your own "skins" to be used as your personal background for the Ask.com home page.
The Ask.com Blog explains exactly how to do it, so follow the directions there.
There are more details on exactly what demographic bidding is at AdWords, but in short, you can specific which age or gender you want to bid higher or lower on, or even exclude your ads from being shown to.
Didn't Google already launch this? Then it was a US test only and used comScore Media Metrix data for the demographics data. I posted more history on our confusion of this "relaunch," which Google is not calling it, at Search Engine Land.
Google AdWords Traffic Estimator for international keyword data is not producing statistically valid results.
First reports came in at Google Groups yesterday afternoon. The report read as follows:
At the moment the Traffic Estimator gives no or almost no data for e.g. German or Italian keywords. The English data works fine. This is definitely not the usual statistical uncertainties but completely missing data chunks for whole languages.
The issue has been verified and confirmed by Google AdWords representative who said, "Yes, I can confirm - this was a known issue, seen by a number of advertisers, which you should now find to be resolved." But the issue is not resolved, at least not currently. According to advertisers, the numbers reported are about 100 times lower then what one might expect.
Jeremy, ShoeMoney, has posted the podcast of his "debate" on how "he dislikes 95% of SEOs" out there. Danny Sullivan stepped up to defend the SEO industry and community. Danny did an outstanding job, by providing the basics of SEO, a ton of history including SEMPO details and backed up his stuff by fact.
Yes, many seasoned SEOs found the "debate" boring. But we can't blame Danny for that. Shoe set up the debate but did was not able to get under Danny's skin to create a "heated" debate. Why wasn't Shoe able to do this? I have my theories...
Shoe was supported early on by the SEO community. They accepted him in, he gave back to the community and no matter what he thinks, he is part of the SEO community.
SEOs are people, people are both good and bad. Generalizations are bad and Shoe knows this.
Danny is very diplomatic and easy tempered.
Live discussion is often less heated and opinionated then a personal blog post
I can go on but I won't. Like I said, most SEOs and non-SEOs listening wanted the debate to get heated. It did not and in the long run, that is a good thing. We do not need to see more fighting within the SEO community, and yes, Shoe, you are very much part of the SEO community. Heck, I am part of the SEO community and I don't sell SEO services. But our input as bloggers, writing about SEO and yes you write about SEO, makes us part of the SEO community. We do not need to fight amongst ourselves.
Many other tools are listed, including regular tools (such as office suites, IM applications, graphics suites, and HTML editors), but these are the recommended tools for web promotion.
A WebmasterWorld member is disgruntled with Microsoft adCenter. Ever since his ads were optimized, adCenter stopped displaying them. He writes:
I have been running some campaings for 2 months. When I started optimizing bids my ads stopped being shown on msn and live. I have no impressions at all.
Rep says my site is not banned, but I need to change ads and increase bids which are not copetetive.
My bids ARE competetive, I change my ads I still have no impressions or just a few while before I had thousands and CTR apx 2%.
Unfortunately, he's not alone. Another member dropped adCenter in favor of Google.
They did the same to some of my accounts. I just pulled all my own and my clients' accounts out of adCenter and shifted the budgets back to Google - nine accounts in all - I don't have time for this, and the returns haven't been worth it.
It seems that while the same thing may happen on Google. Google's AdWords representatives tell the advertiser that they have to raise their minimum bid prices so that they get better traffic.
And all of these advertisers comply -- because they get a lot of traffic if they do.
The difference, then, between Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter is that the subscribers are willing to pay top dollar for Google's traffic. They can't say that they will get as good traffic from Microsoft, so they just drop Microsoft instead.
Vunet.com reports that Ask.com has hired a former Google executive, Cesar Mascaraque, as the company's new European managing director.
In a statement, Mascaraque said that he's very excited to join as Ask is the fastest growing search engine.
Forum members, obviously, have a problem with that perception, as Hitwise shows that Ask.com shares haven't grown significantly over the past few months. Perhaps, though, things are about t change.
Mascaraque was also quoted as saying "I have watched the brand set itself apart from competitors by pioneering new products and offering innovative ways of bringing search to users."
And a forum member agrees with that sentiment:
Ask does have an interesting media blitz going on and have been for the past 12 months or so. Between the Unibomber Billboards and the TV Commercials, the Ask Brand is getting out there.
About a year ago we heard rumors that Google AdSense might test floating ads. You know those ads that actually move with you as you scroll through the page. Some floating ads run across the screen and jump in your face. here are some examples of floating ads.
One would immediately think that floating your AdSense ads in this manner are totally against Google's terms of service. Why? Because you cannot bring crazy attention to your ads, which drive people to click on them even if they may not necessary mean to.
AdSensePro Jordan, an official Google AdSense representative laid down the law on this in a Google Groups thread, saying they are not allowed:
I've checked with our policy specialists and placing Google ads in a floating script would be a violation of AdSense policy.
Thanks for double-checking before implementing, everyone. Also please feel free to link other users to this thread if they want official confirmation of the policy.
I rarely login to check my Google AdSense account, but I did last night and was presented with an error. The error was in a dozen plus languages, but the English version read:
The Google AdSense website is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later. We apologize for any inconvenience.
At first, I thought it was my network but it seems like it was very widespread and lasted at least a couple hours.
We have reports from WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums. The earliest report is at 5:01 pm (EST) from WebmasterWorld that AdSense was posting this login error. A couple hours later the login began working again.
I do not think actual earnings or live ads were impacted. There is a thread at WebmasterWorld with publishers complaining about low earnings, but that is probably just slowness in the AdSense reports.
In late December, we reported about a possible Position 6 Google Penalty. What that meant was that many people noticed their number one or two rankings all of a sudden dropped to position number 6.
Google's Matt Cutts denied such a penalty existed:
Hmm. I'm not aware of anything that would exhibit that sort of behavior.
But you never know what was put into the algorithm that would make Google behave that way?
In any event, folks over at WebmasterWorld, starting around message number 3550215 on January 16th, have noticed that for many of their keywords hit by the number 6 penalty (or whatever you want to call it), noticed they were back at number one! One such data center showing the "pre-number 6 penalty" results was reported at 64.233.183.107. But many are now reporting that the number 6 penalty is now back and their number one rankings are again lost.
A Search Engine Watch Forums thread is discussing if some companies are taking vanity search ads too far. Typically, the vanity search ads companies should own are for their own name and domain name. But some are going further. Some want to own it all and become synonymous with the product line they are selling. At what point is it too much?
For example, a search on computers returns ads from Microsoft, HP, Dell, Gateway, BestBuy, Circuit City, etc. BestBuy, Circuit City and their kind are buying the ads to sell. Microsoft, HP, Dell and Gateway might be trying to sell - but they might also be buying it for branding and vanity reasons. I don't see an Apple ad there.
How about the ultimate vanity ad for a search on god:
Nah, I made that up but something like that would be kind of crazy.
In any event, do you think some companies are taking it too far with vanity searches?
The New York Times reports that Yahoo is cutting hundreds of jobs this year.
Yahoo is planning to lay off hundreds of employees in an effort to increase its profitability, prop up its deflated stock price and narrow the focus of its sprawling Internet portal to a smaller number of crucial areas, people close to the company said Monday.
The announcement is supposed to be made official within the next few days, and according to reports, it's still unknown at this time who will get the axe and who will remain at the company.
One thing, however, is that it looks like this is just the beginning of a trend at many Internet companies, according to a forum member.
I suspect such layoff notices may become a common occurance for many Internet companies over the next few months.
Is the bubble about to burst? I don't know ... look at Google's stock and tell me:
A little over a week ago, we reported that Google and IncrediMail broke up as the search engine giant decided to stop serving Google AdSense ads on the IncrediMail site. Well, it looks like all is well now, and IncrediMail is now back on track with Google. According to a press release, Google has reinstated AdSense on IncrediMail's site.
Google and IncrediMail are now co-operating with the goal of resolving any remaining compliance issues, if any.
In the future, though, forum members are hinting at possibly not putting all your eggs in the AdSense basket.
Let's say you wanted to be altruistic and provide a link to a site in hopes to raise awareness about a program that they promote. But when you alert the webmaster of said site, they go on a hissy fit and claim that linking to their site is a copyright violation.
The back story is this: a person has had a web site about animal shelters. The site links to numerous shelters and provides their logos. A few months ago, he had to change URLs because his ISP went down. He put up a new site on a new URL and alerted the linked sites to the new site. One of these people, in particular, got all upset and said that doing so constitutes a privacy violation. Is it worth fighting in court?
The answer, to many, is no. The easy solution is just to remove the link and logo and let the guy lose his traffic. But the owner feels that this is not a good solution -- his motives are purely altruistic and he wants to keep the link intact because of his desire to have these animals adopted and not killed.
And many people, therefore, think that there's no reason to keep the link. In fact, taking the guy to court over a nonsensical issue like this would not work. Worst comes to worst, the chairman of the charity should be brought in to assess whether the person who threatened the webmaster has done so wrongly (and everyone agrees that the legal threat has no bearing).
I've never heard of any law or regulation that prevents you from linking to anything on your web site. It's your web site -- you decide the rules, aside from your host.
It looks like the webmaster is right and the animal shelter is wrong. Linking won't get you in trouble, and the issue probably holds no water in a court of law.
Google launched Universal Search back in mid-May of last year. Since then, SEOs and Webmasters have become interested in how to leverage that to their benefit. But some are just upset and want the universal search blend to go away.
This lead me to think, hey - as a searcher, what if I wanted the old school, plain vanilla organic Google results to show up when I search and keep those pesky vertical search results out of my way when I am searching. The Ask 3D interface does a fairly good job of separating out the organic results from any mixed results together - which does the job. But no where in the Google Search preferences does it give a searcher the ability to say, "Don't give me universal results."
We can specify we don't want personalized results by logging out or using a special URL trick, which I use all the time. But can't we get something similar to turn off Universal Results? Maybe an &unvs=0 or something like that, would do.
Giving the searcher more power over their search results is a win-win for Google.
Here is an unusual scenario for you. You have a web page, the web page is one page of many on your site. This specific page does not allow search engines to crawl them by using a robots.txt file to restrict access. Now, the webmaster wants to hide links or text on that page from the end user. If you hide text on pages that search engines are not suppose to crawl, but I guess technically can crawl since the page is not password protected, are you at risk to a penalty from a search engine?
Got that? Page A contains a noindex, nofollow META Tag. Page A, hides links and text. Can Page A cause the whole site to be penalized by Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask.com or other search engines?
We know hiding links and text are against all search engines terms of service. But can you hide links and text on pages that search engines are asked not to crawl?
Why would someone want to do this? Designers might do this for 'creative reasons.'
There is currently a debate going on about this topic at WebmasterWorld. Personally, I think it would be fine to hide links or text in this situation - at least it won't be a violation of the terms of a search engine, since search engines are not allowed to access that page. It might violate your end user's terms of service, but technically, what a search engine should not be crawling should not be of interest to a search engine.
Just a tidbit based on a Google Groups thread, using the Google Remove URLs feature will only remove the content from Google for 90 days. After 90 days, if you do not block the page from crawlers or tell crawlers not to index the page, Google will crawl and list the page again in the Google search results.
Content removed with this tool will be excluded from the Google index for a minimum of 90 days, regardless of whether the content becomes available to our crawler during that time.
JohnMu, Googler, explains why it is only for 90 days.
The 90-day limit is to help make sure that you do not accidentally remove content from the search results permanently.
What if you realize you removed a URL by mistake? No problem! Just go back to Google Webmaster Tools and then back to the Remove URLs area, to request the URL to be added back to Google. More on those steps over here.
To remove a page from Google forever, use the Remove URLs tool to expedite the removal and then slap on a noindex and a robots.txt file to restrict crawling.
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that new installations of the popular blogging software, WordPress, is by default blocking all search engines.
He said, when you go to the Privacy Options section in the administration panel, by default, it is set to block all search engine robots from crawling the blog. He said, by default, this option is selected:
I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors
At one point, Google's Blogger blocked spiders by default as well. I am not sure if Google's Blogger still does, but it did at one point.
There has not been any confirmation made if others have noticing that clean, new installs of WordPress block spiders by default. But there is at least one person reporting so.
Tad Chef, aka SEO 2.0, wrote an interesting piece on the Collective Thoughts blog about why you shouldn't trust Google. Among his reasons:
Google supports and implements censorship measures in nondemocratic countries like China
Google owns one of the biggest US SEO companies, now isn’t that a conflict of interest?
Google will disclose your private data or IP to identify you even to authorities of non-democratic countries or in cases where people are guilty of free speech
Another nine reasons are listed that range from Google utilizing students to manually clean up search results to using the same rhetoric as the Bush administration ("we're not evil").
Obviously he's a big Google skeptic. On Sphinn, numerous individuals have cheered for the post but others, like Jason Falls, found trouble with it. His argument is that the post was controversial linkbait that attempted to drive traffic to the the blog post.
But the bottom line is that Google is under a microscope because of its big presence. As one user on Sphinn says, "People never like monopolies and the same applies to Google."
Danny Sullivan takes every item and compares them to other search engines in his comment on Sphinn. Compared to Yahoo and MSN, Google doesn't seem half bad. It's the nature of business, I suppose.
Do you trust the big G? Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
According to Marketwatch, Nielsen is reporting that Google has only captured 56.3% of the US search market in December compared to 57.7% the previous month. The gain seems to be in Microsoft, which captured 13.8% of the search share compared to 12% the previous month.
But all is not lost for Google, at least in terms of its video properties. CNN Money reports that Google has a 31.3% hold on video, which is substantially ahead of second place, Fox Interactive Media, which only has a 4.4% share of videos. The lowest-ranked video site on the CNN list is Break.com with a 0.5% of shares (which is surprising for me, at least, since I see that site often! However, that's mostly through Digg -- and the bottom line is, then, that Digg isn't the only place you should focus your branding efforts upon.)
Bill Slawski writes on Cre8asite Forums that when you perform a search on Google with words like "to," "be," "the," or "a," you no longer see a message saying "XXX is a common word and was not included in your search." Instead, it displays all the results, so when I search for my BFF The Lisa, it takes me where I want to go without any setbacks.
On the heels of the discovery by Dan Thies, Bill believes that this may be related to a Google patent that Google is attempting to look at multi-stage query processing, which he explains as "a patent application that is listed as related to the one dealing with compression explores a way to handle queries that's somewhat different."
It hasn't been confirmed, though, if the stop words issue is a bug or a new thing that is being paved to accommodate this patent application. Barry writes at Search Engine Land that he will try to find out official word from Google.
If you haven't used Google Webmaster Tools yet, you might as well start because there's absolutely nothing that should hold you back. It's highly recommended and now it even has its own start guide. The guide gives you basic information about Google Webmaster Tools, from the dashboard to site diagnostics and more. If you've have a burning question about Google Webmaster Tools, it will hopefully be answered here.
TechCrunch got a tip that Yahoo Search is testing integration Del.icio.us results in the search results. In my opinion, bad idea Yahoo.
Michael Arrington says it "Delicious search is one of the best ways of searching for things when a standard search doesn’t pull up what you are looking for." True, but Yahoo search users won't understand it. They simply won't get it.
We have discussion on this topic at Sphinn where SEOs and SEMs weigh in. One person said this will lead to more Delicious spam, "so begins the mass creation of Delicious accounts meant to spam." Of course, for bloggers and delicious users, we are happy, as one person said, "What a great step that would be, given word of mouth is a bigger influencer of our purchase behaviour than is any other variable." But as Michael said, "excellent idea, horrible integration, stumbleupon nailed it on the head, the delicious integration is is inferior hopefully they will bring it up."
Still, I don't think Yahoo searchers would get it. I don't even think most Google searchers would get it.
Yahoo just sent me a screen capture:
It should work for you on a search for JAVA, but it doesn't work for me in Safari.
A SitePoint Forums thread asks, as links get older, to they loose their power? Here is the exact question:
This is something I have noticed couple of times in the past - it "feels" that old backlinks expire or loose value over time. Mostly for Google, although I can vouch for other search engines, since I've been monitoring this behavior on Google only. I know for sure that certain links do exist, but Google either discounts them or gives them less value with each PageRank update. Those links slowly disappear from back link search results.
It is a very good question. In fact, I wrote a post a while back named The Life Time Value of Links Based on Google Webmaster Central. In that write-up, I tried to look at Google's Webmaster Tools and see if there is any valid evidence to prove that links, as they age, are worth less or not? I was not able to come up with such a conclusion.
The question of aged links is a good one. On one hand, some people feel Google only values links that have aged. On the other hand, people say fresh and new links are more valuable than older links. Which is it? Of course, you can then say, fresh links on established and aged domains are worth the most. Or is it older links on established and aged domains worth more?
I figured I poll the audience and see which type of link you would prefer. Of course, there are many variables, but keep everything consistent and equal, except the variables mentioned in the poll:
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Google seems to be misreporting conversion data for the Google Referrals product.
The affiliate decided to test out his theory by isolating it to one specific product. The nature of the product he picked was that every conversion would translate to a "non-zero amount." He noticed that the "daily earnings are always a multiple of the single conversion price." That the integer_number is usually less than 1/3 of the number of conversions."
He is not the only one to notice issues with Google reporting wrong numbers in the Referral product.
Is Google skimming affiliates? I.e. skimming money off the top? Would they ever?
Continued discussion in a WebmasterWorld thread reports from several AdWords Editor users that the issues are now lingering on.
I've been trying to post mass quantities of changes today, and it's locked up without posting every time. I've saved off a copy of my changes in CSV format, rebooted, actually reinstalled the AdWords Editor, and loaded back in my changes. Every time it just stops, without posting any keywords. So I've got a bunch of empty campaigns and ad groups, there's no way to import from CSV file anymore (is there?) and apparently no way to get the AdWords Editor working again. So I am looking at typing in 637 keywords with their various match types. This does not make me happy.
Two other unhappy AdWords customers have confirmed the issue on January 20th. So it does not appear to be a network issue with a specific ISP, but rather an issue with Google.
Now that Barry is adding video to the buzz roundup (a move which I totally disagree with (since I like reading more than listening, hehehe), I have to be on my best behavior. Without further ado, here's what you missed this week.
Your New Google PageRank Isn't Really Visible
There's much going on about the new Google directory update since it's not consistent with the PageRank score that you see. Now if only DMOZ accepted my website so that I can find out what my "real" PageRank is. This little four keeps bugging me. I want a perfect ten. kthxmatt.
Yahoo Files Revised "PageRank" Patent
Bill Slawski discovered an interesting Yahoo "PageRank" patent that illustrates the problems with Google's PageRank. The goal is not so much about just links but about user behavior and whether they stay on your page. Users suspect that Google might be pumping out the same thing, so we'll see who gets it done first.
If you're a Google AdWords advertiser, you might feel good to know that Google stores the history of your ads in every single edit. However, each edited ad is treated as a new ad. As Barry notes, "that is why when editing an ad, it may not impact the quality score as much as starting a new ad from scratch."
Google Partners with The Weather Channel to Provide Data on Maps
Google broke up with IncrediMail last week, when it stopped serving AdSense ads on IncrediMail's site. This is a publicly traded company so the news is not good for investors. In fact, their stock went down 45%. Not good indeed.
Better news for AdSense publishers: Google has come out with a glossary of terms if you're starting out with AdSense. This is great... now if only Google would come out with ways to make $10 million a month with AdSense with little to no work. Thank you in advance.
Something's up with AOL UK search: it's missing probably billions of .net domains. If you do a search for site:.net, you'll only see a little over 200 results. I just ran this query and found only 203. Poor .net holders....
If you were wondering, a lot of webmasters have reported January Yahoo updates. Looks like Yahoo is doing something behind the curtain.
SEMMYs
As you may know, the SEMMYs have been announced. This is a new award based on Matt McGee's favorite blog posts of the year. We've been nominated for a few blogs and hope to see which win. Good luck to all!
I Dare You to Stay Away from Search News for a Week
Donna dared you to stay away from search for 24 hours. I up the ante and ask you to stay away for a week. I bet I can do it (as long as Barry doesn't make me blog). I'd probably feel swamped after the week is up, but if someone wants to bet me $$$ to do it, I'm game. Maybe I'll even put up a webcam.
Yesterday, Google announced that its charity organization (Google.org) will be working on five different initiatives to "combat climate change, global poverty and emerging threats such as pandemic disease." While the news is being received well by many individuals who are glad that Google is stepping it up a notch, others are obviously skeptical of the approach:
I suspect that handing out $30 million in grants is cheaper than showing true corporate responsibility. Don't forget the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks given to Google to move to this or that location. Taking the US-wide view, Google avoiding all these taxes means substantially less tax money to spend on 'Do Good Projects' by the various levels of government - a shortfall which must be met by an increase in taxes, or just not met at all.
But others disagree:
Well, that not only does whatever good Google can do with that money, but it prevents whatever ills the various levels of government would have done with it...
Overall, while there are a few critics in the crowd as there always are, the situation looks to be a win-win situation, with many people applauding the approach of Google.
They are starting to be like Bill Gates Foundation which is great! You earned billions of dollars from society and are now contributing back to society. These news immediately give me a much favorable outlook of Google. This is really a blessing of humanity that arch rivals Microsoft and Google do have a same goal - to help mankind.
A Google Groups member wonders if adding sexual health tips can affect your AdSense ad acceptance since Google will treat them as an "adult" site. The answer is yes, it can.
AdSensePro writes:
A casually written blog about someone's cooking lessons, for example, would probably be acceptable in the AdSense network, while a casually written blog about someone's personal sex tips probably wouldn't be acceptable.
More information can be see at the Google AdSense blog where they emphasize the importance of keeping the content allowed on AdSense "family safe."
The important statement that addresses the concern is here:
Our policy regarding adult or mature content may include any material that is not appropriate for all audiences. While this obviously includes full nudity or sexual activity, it may also include textually explicit sexual content, image or video content containing lewd or provocative poses, strategically covered nudity, see-through or sheer clothing, and close-ups of anatomy that would be inappropriate if shown nude. Additionally, topics such as sexual health and sex tips may be held to a higher standard of professionalism than content that isn't bordering on mature.
Guess what? Beyond the value that Microsoft's Live Search Webmaster Portal has for gaining statistical information about your website, it also has an added bonus of the ability to connect with the Live Search team. A WebmasterWorld member says that if you're not ranking at all in Live Search, the team at the Webmaster Portal actually listen to your complaints, especially since there's a good number of complaints that sites don't seem to rank on MSN Live Search at all.
Suggest you get your site validated with their webmastertools, POST YOUR PROBLEM and keep up with those posts. You can also submit your site for manual review if you like.
Since submitting your request from the "Feedback" button (bottom of the Live Search Results) page seems to be unanswered, using the portal might be your best bet. You just have to be persistent. Unfortunately, Live Search is not as fast at indexing pages as it used to be, but hopefully that will change (especially due to the Fast Search acquisition).
One of my sites, Schwag Addict, seems to be a good candidate for the portal. I rank #1 on Ask, Yahoo, and Google for "schwag addict" as expected, but I'm nowhere to be found on Live Search. The site doesn't seem to rank at all. It's good to know that I have some recourse with the tool, as others feel the same way.
Postscript Barry: I am told it is not clear from Tamar's post that this seems to be a pattern happening to many webmasters. As you can see from the forum thread at WebmasterWorld, many SEOs and webmasters are noticing that new sites are simply not ranking well in Live Search. I asked Tamar if it was true for her new site, and she had no idea if it was until after she looked and said - yes, it appears to be true on her site as well. So, generally, these days, Live Search is slow to rank newer sites well in the results.
On her blog, DazzlinDonna proposes a plan that some people think is unfathomable: stay away from search news for 24 hours. Her argument is that if you avoid the news, you might actually be able to get things done.
The question is: can you do it? If so, do it today.
The discussion moves over to Sphinn where most, if not all of the forum participants, believe that they cannot step away from their computers and avoid search-related news. It just seems too difficult.
In a way, I can relate to that. If I avoid reading blogs for 24 hours, I have over 2500 new posts to read and I don't give them the attention they deserve. That's why I'm checking my feed reader constantly.
(Oh, and if you vowed to participate, why are you reading this?!)
Maybe Donna will just have to form a support group.
A short WebmasterWorld thread asks if links from logos or images give off any link popularity amongst the search engines.
WebmasterWorld Link Development moderator, pageoneresults, replies that although text links are preferred, "you are getting the next best thing which is an image link." But how do you get the most out of your image links?
Make sure the image has an ALT attribute (alternative text)
Can't hurt to try adding a TITLE attribute (i.e. title="") to the link part of the code around the image
Surrounding text around the image can play a factor in describing the value of the link of that image
The link URL may also play a small factor in determining relevancy
I wanted to get some opinion on text links versus image links from you. I am sure you all prefer text links over image links but in your opinion, how much do you think an image link is worth relative to a text link? Honestly, I am not even sure if that question make sense. I'll rephrase and try to do your best to complete the poll below.
An image link is worth what percentage less than a text link? I.e. Image link A in the same location text link A is valued at 45% the weight of text link A.
Baidu, the Google of China, reportedly has received approval from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) to become a domain name registrar. Why do we care?
Remember when Google became a domain registrar in January 2005? We, SEOs, did not stop worrying about if Google would use that data in their search algorithms. Most SEOs believe, without a doubt, Google uses some whois data, data that is easily provided to them, in their algorithms.
I am seeing early signs of reports of a Yahoo Search index and algorithm update. The last update at Yahoo Search was on December 3rd of last year, so we are well due an update.
We have threads at both WebmasterWorld (see new posts of this old thread) and at DigitalPoint Forums, with signals that the update has begun. And about 99% of the time, we report the update before the official Yahoo Search Blog does - so expect a post there today or within a few days.
One WebmasterWorld member said:
My rankings are starting to show up again, but not even close to where they once were. I must admit, that I am glad to see that I am not the only one.
What's up with Yahoo?
A DigitalPoint member said:
Yes, I saw changes... something is updating right now...
A Search Engine Land post discusses why it's useful to share SEO tactics with your clients. It's not about holding "intellectual property" to yourself. It's about empowering the client. And there's no harm in it. Here's why.
For one thing, even if you provide information to your clients, SEO is constantly evolving so it will still be your responsibility to keep up the pace. But still, there's a benefit of knowledge transfer. With the constant changes in the industry, "[a]ctive clients can provide additional eyes and ears to industry changes and trends, as well as practical insights into the effectiveness of advanced SEO tactics."
Additionally, the article argues that there should be a documented methodology:
The client should also learn the philosophies and processes behind keyword research, page selection, content development and optimization, link building, and social media marketing.
By acting on the Diagnostic Audit findings, the client can identify obstacles that are hindering their efforts to achieve top search rankings.
Finally, it is also of critical importance to understand the value of analytics. With the right training, your clients can understand the complexity of analytics applications.
The discussion evolves on Sphinn where many SEOs believe that the mutual relationship is important. As one person puts it, "Education is a bigger part of my job than the actual process itself."
It's important to acknowledge that there are some SEO firms that are just very open with their processes. So most people agree that there's no reason to hide anything from your clients.
There are a few people who log into their Google AdSense accounts everyday. Call it an addiction, if you will. To many, it really is nothing more than one.
So a Google AdSense publisher decided to take a vacation from logging into AdSense and reported his findings back to us. What did he note? His earnings were better than expected, though he doesn't think it has anything to do with not logging in. He also says that he saved a lot of time even now. No longer is he compelled to log into AdSense numerous times a day to check his earnings. The biggest takeaway, though, was the reduced stress involved with not checking everyday:
The biggest reason this experiment was a success had to be the lack of worrying what was going on in my account from day to day. At the end of the 30 days I began to feel very silly about any emotional investment I had previously made into the account. Some days are way up, some days are way down and others are average. Looking at your account on an hourly/daily basis can STRESS you out.
This was an eye-opening experience for one AdSense publisher, but not everyone can stay away for that long. If it's your livelihood, you can't take a break.
There is no one good answer and I agree with CentennialEmpire that it all depends on where you are with AdSense. As an executive for a firm that makes six figure income with AdSense, waiting for 30 days is out of question.
Some feel that you should still check in every so often to see about making it more profitable for them. This might be part of the addiction, but it might just be part of making some money.
The other problem with the experiment can be that your competitors can steal your traffic and revenues if you step away. Your niche might not be in your stronghold after you return. Therefore, 30 days just seems a bit far for many people to reach.
One person says that this is just really dangerous:
DONT STOP MONITORING YOUR WEBSITES if you care about them or if they are worth something.
The point, though, should be that you should check AdSense every so often -- perhaps not every day like before, but regularly -- to ensure that you're still ahead of the game and that you're putting money in your pocket.
In any event, I applaud the guy for giving his feedback on his experiment and for doing it for a full month.
A CNet article talks about an initiative to spread information about disasters and recovery. The project is called Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEDD) and is being funded partially by a $5 million grant by Google's charitable organization (Google.org). The goal is to use services such as Twitter and Facebook to coordinate rescue responses and to hopefully save many lives in the process.
At its launch Thursday, the InSTEDD Web site will also feature blogs and a directory of aid workers, where professionals can register and regularly update their locations. That way, people can easily locate others in the event of a disaster.
The concept seems appealing, and since Twitter has been known as a tool that helps find missing children in addition to announcing disasters such as earthquakes, it's a great initiative.
Bill Slawski recently wrote an interesting post entitled Yahoo Replaces PageRank Assumptions with User Data. In the article, he discusses a "User Sensitive PageRank" patent application filed by Yahoo that addresses the flaws with PageRank. These flaws include the assumption that all links are created equal, bored surfers don't go to random pages, bored surfers don't always go to only trusted pages, pages change value at different rates, and sometimes PageRank calculations cheat.
The Yahoo patent will replace some of these assumptions with user data about how they surf the web.
The title of this post was inspired by the Sphinn discussion that ensued where Matt McGee suggested a new name. Bill further makes the point that PageRank needs to be adjusted:
I think that this points out the value of making a strong site that influences people to stay and look around, focusing upon other things like usability, too.
However, many people believe that Google is doing the same thing. After all, most folks want the PageRank tool to go away, but it's probably just a matter of replacing it with something better.
WebmasterWorld moderator, Receptional, says in a WebmasterWorld thread that Microsoft has invited him to participate in the adExcellence accreditation program in the UK. It seems like it was just launched, however we did expect an adExcellence UK launch in 2007 and not 2008. I guess being 15 days late isn't all that bad.
In any event, we first began hearing about this program in April 2007. You can sign up for the UK program over here.
We have been reporting about Microsoft's issues with handling 301 permanent redirects since September 2006. We came back to the issue this past December but still, Webmasters are complaining at the lack of support for 301 redirects in Microsoft's Live Search.
A 301 redirect typically tells a search engine that page A (old URL) moved permanently to page B (a new URL). A search engine will see that 301 status code and log that the new URL is in a new location. Over time, a search engine would replace the original URL with the new URL in the search results, as well as transfer all or most of the links and signals associated with the original URL to the new URL. Google is fast with this, Yahoo picks up on this and although Ask.com is slow, they eventually get it as well.
Microsoft seems not to pick up on 301 redirects.
A WebmasterWorld thread has continued discussion on the topic of Microsoft's inability to properly handle the 301 status code.
One member claims speaking with a Live Search engineer:
Yeah, I spoke to various people even a particular person from Live Search. They confirmed that at the moment, Live can't handle 301 redirects.
I trust they are working on this issue, hope so at least.
Well - it has been long enough, don't you think? Let's make this a priority if possible. Google handled it big time when you guys changed from spaces.msn.com to spaces.live.com across millions of different URLs.
As you may know, the highly popular Sphinn Internet Marketing Forum is looking for ways to get better. So they're proposing a Desphinn button which will work much like a "Bury" button that you see on other social networks. If you think a post doesn't deserve to be frontpaged, you can downvote it using Desphinn, or so that's the goal.
But is it worth it? The current proposal suggests that when you downvote something, you need to give your reasons why -- and the information will be public. I have to agree that this is a good way of using it, but t here are other forum members who find that this can polarize the community and cause animosity. Honestly, though, if your reasons are compelling enough, you can agree to disagree -- or so we'd hope that the community would be open to criticisms from their peers.
I think it's going to be a wait-and-see type deal. As Maki says:
I'm looking forward to the depshinn button. I understand the reservations of others, but its good to just launch it, monitor how the community uses it and then make the necessary adjustments from the feedback or actions.
On that note, there is also a "Report as Spam" button on Sphinn. This is for blatant spam, not for posts you disagree with.
Finally, Search Engine Watch Forums has come out with a Social Media category. If you're in love with social media like me, this is where you should be posting.
A WebmasterWorld thread asks how well you're doing on your Google AdWords advertising campaign. What's your highest CTR? One forum member says that he had 7% and after split-testing ads, got a 12% CTR. Others have actually seen 20% CTR. I have to say that this is pretty impressive.
Click Through Rates depend on a lot of factors, though. So if you're not doing so well, it's okay. Here are some factors you want to consider:
CTRs depend on so many factors... including the following and so many more: the vertical, your average position, the strength of competition, how well your ad is written, how close your ad matches the query, the match type of the keyword, seasonality, the day of week/time of day, the particular syndication partners that drive traffic to this keyword, what country you're in, who you're targeting, and more.
And if you have a high CTR, stop worrying about your competition. You're doing just fine as it is.
But in case you're curious: are you as lucky as some of these advertisers? Take the poll.
If you see spam in Google search results, you can report it to Google using the Report a Spam Result link. Google claims that they take these allegations seriously and investigates them to see if the results are spammy.
A WebProWorld Forums member is wondering, though, if Google is taking heed to his spam report. According to him, there is one company that has multiple websites with duplicate content and they are dominating the front page of the SERPs. How can he report this?
Well, perhaps he cannot. In fact, forum members think that he should focus on "real" spam and not competitive spam, like copyright infringement and trademark issues. Apparently, Google just doesn't take action on all of these spam requests, because there are probably far too many of them.
Ditto on Google doing nothing. I made a number of reports of sites that posted giberish containing my best keywords. Google never acknowledged getting the reports and never took action. I wasted my time.
If you're not sure what all that Google AdSense jargon means, you're not alone. Fortunately, the Google team has your back. A Google AdSense Glossary has been posted to Google and covers everything from account type to ad display terms to reports to technical terms.
For example:
Cost-per-click (CPC)
The CPC is the amount an advertiser pays each time a user clicks on his/her ad. Google AdWords has a CPC pricing system.
If you've heard about PSAs and don't know what they are, go to this definition. What about Effective CPM? That's there too.
And like other "help" documents on Google's site, you can provide feedback to Google to inform them about whether the information given is helpful or not so that they can continue to release a product that addresses everyone's satisfaction.
A Google Groups thread asks if they publish an article and it is found on Google News, but then want to make a change to that article - will it be updated?
The answer is no. Google News crawls the page once and will not come back to look for changes. A Google News representative confirmed this:
Currently the crawler crawls a particular article at a particular URL once. So in short, no.
You can get articles completely removed by submitting a written request, but that won't update the news story. In these cases, it is probably best to write a small "postscript" and link to a new story if warranted.
Want an example of a mess up that I personally did once or twice?
Back in August 2006, while at Search Engine Watch, I wrote a dumb typo where instead of writing "Google Has Too Much Money", I wrote, "Google Has Too Much Monday." It got indexed by Google News and showed up like this:
So these things do happen and they are hard to fix.
I do have a feeling Google News is working on something to update articles, but I have no insider information on this.
A Google Groups thread reports and confirms there is a major issue when trying to login to Gmail with Internet Explorer 7. Users with IE7 who try to access their Gmail email are seeing blank login screens, preventing them from accessing their email.
Gmail Guide, an official Google Gmail representative has confirmed the issue and offered some work arounds until they can patch the bug.
I've got an update -- our engineers have identified the problem and are working on a fix. For the time being, there are several options available for users affected by this issue:
Access your account with another browser such as Mozilla Firefox.
Please keep in mind that this update refers to users receiving a blank white page on login when using IE7. Thanks for everyone's patience and participation!
I spotted an interesting tidbit over at Google Groups where we have a Google AdWords API representative give us some deeper insight into how editing ads technically work at Google.
Here is a quote from the AdWords API rep:
If you've ever edited an ad via the AdWords web interface and you're particularly inquisitive, you might notice that the ad's underlying ID changes after the update. You also might notice that there's a running count of how many "edited or deleted" ads there are in the Ad Variations tab of a given ad group in the web interface. One might draw the conclusion from this that when you edit an ad's text via the AdWords web interface, you're effectively creating a new ad and disabling/deleting the previous ad, allowing our system to keep track of the previous ad versions with a unique ID as well as the current one.
Given such a potential backend setup, if updateAds() allowed modifying ad content it would just be a thin wrapper over what everyone can already do via the API, namely creating a new ad and disabling the old.
As you can see, when you edit an ad, the original ad ID is archived and a new ad ID is created for the revised ad. While technically this is creating a brand new ad ID, Google is also storing a database link between the original ad and the new ad you created. So technically, they also know that this ad is a revision of a previous ad.
The image shows that we are creating a new ad, since there is a new ID. But it also shows the symbolic link between the original ad and the revised ad. That is why when edited an ad, it may not impact the quality score as much as starting a new ad from scratch.
Moderator, Discovery at Search Engine Watch Forums received an email from Google on how to block his ads from being displayed on Google's Gmail.
By default, most, if not all, emails you received contain ads along the side that are or should be contextual relevant to the content in your email. Here is an example email from our Search Forum Recaps, which you can also subscribe to over here.
What if you, as an advertiser, don't want your ads to be displayed in people's email? Well, in the past, the only real way to exclude those ads from showing in Gmail would be to opt out of Google's whole content network. That is no longer the case.
To stop your ads from displaying in Gmail, you have to go to the Site Exclusion tool and enter in gmail.com as a site you want to exclude in Google's content network.
Matt McGee arranged a very cool contest that highlights the best posts in Internet Marketing this year. His creation has been called the SEMMYS. And both Barry and I are judging it. In addition, several of our posts have been nominated:
Soon, the judges will have their votes in. Then it's up to you, the people, to vote for the best post of the year. We can't wait to see what the keys hold!
A Google Groups member reports that he has recently gotten a call from a company called Wisdek that promised to deliver high-quality ads for a fee. He wasn't interested, but they proceed to show him that they could deliver. After asking for a few short keywords and ad copy, he checked Google for the terms a few hours later and was surprised to see that his ad was actually up there on the top of the search results. Is this tactic a scam? By seeing the top rankings, why wouldn't you want to sign up with them?
AdWordsPro informs the member to be skeptical of this tactic. And you shouldn't go with the company simply because they can deliver top rankings immediately. As another member says:
Google will often give a new advertiser a boost while they determine the quality score of the ads. Until the Adwords mechanism for calculating quality score kicks in (after it gets enough information to work) this can happen.
The lesson is that you can never guarantee top placement anywhere. AdWordsPro says:
Here's a rule that you can count on: any person or company that promises you any particular position, whether in the unpaid search results or within AdWords ad, is misleading you.
Some webmasters don't understand the value of SEO. How many times have you gone to a website and seen a notification saying "This website address has changed. Please update your bookmarks." Why not implement a 301 redirect instead?
The issue is that you should implement a 301 redirect. Otherwise, if both sites rank (as in this case), your redirected site might outrank the site with all the content. In this particular user's case, an .edu site is outranking a .com. Chances are, the .com was also below the fold and the .edu wasn't. You certainly don't want to do it that way.
When you create a new site, 301 redirect the old site. Don't assume that users care to change their bookmarks. It's not good for search engines, and a lot of users don't rely on the "please change your bookmarks" request because they trust that the redirected page will be there all the time. Just eliminate the guesswork and go with the 301.
Mike Grehan wrote a ClickZ post yesterday about how SEO seems to be an art that is losing its value. His argument is that "textbook SEO" is being replaced by newer methods of optimization, such as social media and other forms of internet marketing. Additionally, SEO recommendations from a case study seems to work for only so long. Eventually, the recommendations are implemented and additional suggestions are of "limited" value to the client who signs up for SEO services.
Search Engine Watch Forums members dissect Mike's argument. The question is: Is the SEO shop losing its value?
Many say that it's just harder and it's evolving differently. For example, AussieWebmaster says that it's not as easy since Google Universal search has been revealed.
A lot of it really has to do with finding the right SEO though:
Keyword meta tag optimizers/spammers are a dime a dozen but, those folks who know how to get maps listed, results for local, videos indexed, news posted, products fead, gadgets gotten, locations on Earth and plus boxes FREE on "the Google", are worth their weight in Gold.
What are your thoughts on the "diminishing value" of the SEO practice?
JohnMu, John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analysts, is reportedly feeling under the weather. Why is this important? Well, JohnMu is probably the single most active Google Webmaster support representatives in the forums today.
Our friend JohnMu is sick. Thankfully not gravely sick, just beset by your usual cold/flu.
However, we fellow Guides thought he'd get more rest and recover more quickly if he didn't check his e-mail and this group every 3.14 minutes, so we're posting this Get Well and Step Away from the Computer note publicly.
Hi John! Now go back to bed! The rest of us got your back :)
With chicken soup 'n' love,
The Webmaster Help Team
John, it sucks getting sick and we all hope you feel better soon!
A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting that when searching over at AOL Search UK, and restricting pages to just "UK Only," the results you get are rarely ever from .net top-level domains.
WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, confirmed this to be the case:
I just went to the aol.co.uk webite and did "UK only" searches such as "keyword inurl:.com" -- you're right, AOL is choosing to show only .co.uk and .org.uk for their "UK only" searches. Not so Google.co.uk, where any domain extension can be found.
He adds that when doing a site command for .net TLDs, only a few come up. For example, a site:.net returns for me only 204 results.
This is probably a tweak that AOL set for this certain search criteria. Google powers AOL Search, but AOL is allowed to make changes to the results - if they see fit. They must feel the TLD is more important than the address on the site or the location of the server.
On my "Overview" screen, when I click on "Top Channels" it is not sorting by "Earnings" as usual. I can't detect a sort field by the data presented, it seems either to be unsorted or sorted by channel-id or some other hidden field.
A Google representative confirmed the issue and said they are working on it. One month later, it is now finally fixed.
Link building is a crucial aspect for SEO. SEOs have and continue to try everything to build quality links quickly for their sites and their clients. Often, the topic of buying a an expired domain - to leverage the links from that site, as opposed to starting fresh.
A HighRankings Forums thread talks just about that. A member asks, should I buy an expired domain, so he doesn't have to start from scratch.
Forum owner, Jill Whalen responds:
Google claims that they reset all backward links from a site once it has new ownership. In which case it won't do you any good.
Now, I have heard this claim before, but I have also heard time and time again that this is a valid and useful strategy. So I asked Jill for the source, since I don't remember ever hearing that from the "horses mouth." Jill stepped up and provided the source from a WebmasterWorld thread dating back to March 2003 where "GoogleGuy," an official Google representative, posted "you can get that domain into Google; you just won't get credit for any pre-existing links."
GoogleGuy's response is that Google will know the domain name expired and then reset it to start from scratch. But what if a company accidently let their domain expire? What happens with domain name transfer of ownerships? What happens when you buy a preexisting site where the domain did not expire? What happens if you change the whois information? These are all questions that have stemmed from this post and has been lingering through the SEO community.
Many SEOs still believe in buying existing sites and leaving the whois information alone. But if a domain expires, it appears Google knows about it and will note it in their database.
Hey Michael! If you buy typos, I'd 301 them to your main site. Even things that you win in UDRP arbitration can be 301'ed. For example, if someone bought porngoogle.com and Google won it in UDRP, it would make sense to 301 it to your main domain.
What I *wouldn't* recommend is try to register unrelated expired domains in an attempt to get those pre-existing links to count toward your domain. I would also avoid registering-and-301'ing typos of competitors' domains or other completely unrelated domains.
Pick up more of that comment (there are two) at Wolf Howl.
Aaron aka TheMadHat wrote a post about SEO interview questions. If you're hiring an SEO, you might want these questions to be on your interview list. Some of them include talking about your general experience or search conferences that you've attended, your familiarity with black-hat techniques, thoughts on competitive analysis, and more. The post is definitely a good place to start if you're seeking to hire some SEO professionals, and the forum discussion at Sphinn pretty much is in agreement.
Still, as Tim Dineen mentions, most of the folks that you'd want to interview who can answer these questions are probably not available for hire. But Jill Whalen says that all hope isn't lost. Find somebody new and train them.
Those questions are fine if you're looking for someone with some SEO experience. I've found that you might be better off looking for someone without SEO knowledge, however, and then training them.
True that. Sometimes that can be risky because they can either work for you or become your competition. There's risk involved in any such area, and this is no exception.
Wiep Knol wrote an interesting post on how to build links for crappy websites. I'm sure many of you have been there: your client has a website that has no real value and you want to build links to it. How do you politely tell them that you can't? Some just won't give in. Then you'll have to build links with other bad websites and eventually someone will realize that the rankings are manipulated and you'll probably lose what you've earned.
In the end, Wiep suggests that you build quality articles to avoid this problem. It's a better long-term goal.
In stead of promoting crap, make sure to start with improving the website, for example by changing the website structure, its layout or by adding quality articles.
But Roger Montti makes a counterpost to the effect that you actually can build links to crappy websites. He lists several ways to get this done: buying websites and domains, developing sites that attract links, buying links, do some real networking with real people, build a nicely-designed website, and don't slack.
Still, a lot of folks believe that it's just difficult to build links to crappy websites. Using the money in your pocket is an easy way to succeed, though. But in terms of natural link building, it's really difficult.
It's an uphill battle when a client is always looking for the quickest way to the cheese with as little investment as possible instead of establishing a long term marketing strategy. In the end, most of them reap what they sow.
Want to know the weather in a variety of locations with ease? What about cloud patterns or weather radar information? You now can from a new feature in Google Maps.
Simply go to My Maps, click on "The Weather Channel" under Featured Content, and start customizing your views.
This is baffling and quite sad. We can imagine that Google AdSense was a good chunk of the company's revenue, and now that option cannot be pursued.
So why did this happen? And why wasn't IncrediMail given adequate warning about any abuse (if that is the case?)
Numerous forum members believe that the traffic quality could have been poor. Additionally, while some forum members applaud the excellent quality of service that they get from IncrediMail, not all members feel that way:
My guess though is Google got sick of being associated with incredimail's rather tacky advertsing/marketing gimmicks and just gave up trying to work with them.
But why IncrediMail and not other MFA sites? Obviously, this is irksome to many:
Great negotiating posture. Nuke one good company's revenue stream while leaving millions of MFA pages untouched. So if anyone thinks it's about "do no evil" or fairness, they now know Google will negotiate Microsoft-Style.
Any company who depends on Adsense for business and negotiating a deal w/ Google now has to worry that Google will pull the rug out from under them if they don't cave to Google's demands.
I guess it all comes down to just not putting all your eggs in one basket. If Google AdSense drops you, you need to have a backup plan. Still, with a 45% tank in its stock price from the event, it's incredibly unfortunate and hopefully these issues will be resolved with a statement from both companies.
Do you hate Britney Spears? You might if you find that she literally is highlighted in Google News everyday. With all her recent insanity problems and the endless custody battle, you might get sick of seeing the same story again and again and again. At least you're not alone. A Google Groups member can't stand it!
How do I eliminate stories about Britany Spears without deleting Entertainment? It doesn't seem to be possible.... help!
So how can you filter out Britney, Paris, and Lindsay from your Google Entertainment News? Simple. Marcela from Google explains how:
You can create a custom section based on the standard Entertainment section, but sans your desired search term. To do this, go into the "Edit this personalized page" mode (top right). Select "Add a custom section". From there, there's an "Advanced" option. This opens up more custom options, including a Section drop-down, from which you can select "Entertainment". Now all you have to do is add [-"britney spears"] to the Keywords box. You can even rename the section with the Label "Entertainment" if you want; now everything looks the same, but any stories focusing on Britney Spears should now be excluded.
If it's your first time personalizing a page, you'll need to go to Personalize this Page:
Once those settings are saved, click on "Edit Your Personalized Page":
Now click on "Add a Custom Section":
Click on Advanced on this screen, and then you can drill down to the right section (Entertainment). At this point, you can exclude all Britney Spears news by typing [-"britney spears"]:
A very ordinary question was promoted to the WebmasterWorld home page, making for a great discussion on TLD, top level domains. The question is, does Google prefer a .com over a .biz, or a .org over a .edu, or .de over a .co.il and so on?
The thread first points to examples of all TLDs ranking well. For example, a search on the keyword germany has the top ten listings in Google as ,org, .de, .de, .info, .gov, .com, .org, .com, .com, and .com. Plus there are many more examples, both "long tail" and very generic examples.
The issue comes where some TLDs are abused by spammers cause they are much cheaper to buy or when you are buying a name on a lesser known TLD when someone own's the main TLD. I personally tend to trust .info domains a lot less because I have seen comment spam after comment spam and most are from .info. Also, most people tend to type .com when looking for something, so having a non-.com version can hurt you there.
We have been through this discussion in the past. I do however recommend checking out the WebmasterWorld thread.
It appears a webmaster is now noticing a bot named MSLIVSOP serving up fake, site-specific keyword referers, as reported earlier. The bot logs the referrer in the form of:
On December 31st, I reported Google short-changed Australian publishers due to a currency conversion issue. After about ten days, it seems like these Australian and New Zealand publishers were now reimbursed for the difference.
I've gotten word that publishers affected by this issue have received any payments due, so I'm going to go ahead and unpin this thread.
Please feel free to post or contact AdSense support if you have any further issues related to this.
Thanks everyone,
Jordan
What happened was, Google inverted the currency exchange rate between US and AUS. So instead of getting the 114% rate difference, they got the 88% a rate - a big difference.
If you did not get the difference mailed to you or via direct deposit, make a stop at the Google Groups thread or email AdSense Support.
For example it seems like the Toolbar PageRank of this site is a PageRank of 4. But if you look at the most recent Google Directory update, this site appears to be a PageRank of 7. Here is a screen capture:
Tamar posted the January 11, 2008 Roundup and I have been meaning to add videos to her recaps. So this is the first time I am trying to add a video to the recap. Your comments are welcome.
I want your feedback on making these videos. A poll below is an easy way to anonymously tell me if you like it or don't like it. If you like them, I will probably just add them to Tamar's recap and not post a whole new post - this way you can view them in her recap and get the links directly from that post. In addition, Ill probably add more pizzazz to the video, such as diagrams, props, music, transitions, etc. So let me know your thoughts below - feel free to comment also.
Happy Friday! After being at work for a full week after the holidays, I'm sure you're excited that the weekend is only a few hours away (unless, of course, you're in the UK or somewhere east of here, in which case you're already relaxing... lucky you!) So let's see, what happened while you were busy catching up with client calls and drowning in paperwork? Allow me to share this week's events with you.
In case you didn't know, this was a big week in talking about how to remove content from Google. In fact, our post inspired Matt Cutts to make a video on removing URLs from Google. (For the record, I am kidding. That video was created a month ago but I don't mind saying that Matt gets inspired by our posts... or Whiteboard Frida. I'm sure Matt doesn't care either. Hi Matt!)
You've been polled and your answers have been tallied. Yahoo is the most improved PPC program of 2007. Panama was a step in the right direction. We polled the readers and they said the same thing. Forty-three percent of the votes went to YSM. Thirty-seven percent went for Google AdWords. I'd love to hear the reasons for your choices. If you voted AdWords, what makes it more improved than Yahoo? The real question is: do you use both? ;)
Wikia: A Lousy Alpha
Wikia Search from Jimmy Wales has been launched, and there's no excitement. In fact, they acknowledge that their search quality is low. I guess this is why it's alpha, though it seems like a haphazard launch if you ask me.
Soon: Google will Read Text in Your Images
We've learned of a recent patent that has been filed by Google that intends to read text in images. I'm sure they're aiming for more relevant results, and that's great. It will be interesting to see how accurate the accurate the readings are with their engine.
Indian Users Faced with Google Hijacking
Earlier this week, if you wanted to visit Google.com in India, you got to a page that displayed a Sogo logo. It appears that Google.com's DNS was hijacked and this other search engine stole the traffic. Uncool. I hope Sogo is delisted from Google for being naughty.
We'll Miss You, Jim Lanzone
The saddest news this week (behind me finding out that Danny scheduled SMX Social Media smack in the middle of the Passover holiday) is that Jim Lanzone is no longer the CEO of Ask. Jim is my Facebook friend and an all around great guy. It's unfortunate that the Ask.com CEO who was an incredibly personable and approachable guy is moving on and we won't be able to get cool Ask.com schwag anymore. But that's not really all. Jim was just awesome. We wish you the best on your future endeavors!
The Google AdSense team has announced that they are no longer giving great incentives to foreign subscribers outside North America, Latin America, and Japan. That sucks for Problogger Darren Rowse, who many know is located in Australia. Three are no incentives for him to use AdSense anymore. And for everyone else, the pricing structure has changed for all users and the earning potential has diminished. Let's just say that this also totally bites.
Microsoft Buys Fast Search for $1.23 Billion
More relevant Microsoft search results may be on the horizon. We've just been informed that Microsoft is acquiring Fast Search, a Norwegian company that has been doing a great job at search. Hopefully this will work very well for Microsoft. I'm excited to see how this plays out.
Google TVs To Play YouTube
Want a Google TV? Well, you might get one. Google TVs are in the works and will play YouTube videos and Picasa albums. In the meantime, if you can't get a Google TV, you still are eligible to win a Google Fridge. I just realized how much this costs and I want it. But alas, I am ineligible as I helped organize the Google contest. Maybe I'll get one eventually...
Images Appearing on Yahoo Sponsored Results
Yahoo is trying to grab your attention by adding images to Sponsored Results. What do you think about this? It certainly adds eye candy to the page! ;)
Google Tests Local Search on Top of Sponsored Results
Rev Up Your Engines for SphinnCon Israel and SMX West
Get ready, my friends. SphinnCon Israel and SMX West are around the corner. Barry will be in Israel and both of us are going to Santa Clara. I'm still bummed that I can't go to SMX Social Media Los Angeles, though. I've never been there! (This will hurt for a long time.)
A Cre8asite Forums member was very happy with herself when she realized that she hit the #1 position for a search phrase that had over 70 million results. Who wouldn't be? That takes a lot of time and effort...
But then she analyzed her logs. She got no traffic. Zilch.
And why? When looking at the results on Google for the same phrase, the competition was Microsoft, government sites, and universities.
And then she looked further. Apparently, using a keyword research tool, she discovered that nobody searches for that term anyway!
What are the takeaways? If rankings are even on the radar for you, do the keyword research first.
Now that you're in the #1 spot, take advantage of it without compromising it. Optimize that page better for more targeted results. It can be a lot of fun and a challenge at the same time.
Did you know that adding &btnI=745 to the end of a URL in Google will force the "I'm Feeling Lucky" query to kick in and throw you to the #1 result on Google? Well, now you do. Here, take a look at the Google results.
First, let's look at the results for RustyBrick. Add the suffix to the domain and you get directed straight to the RustyBrick Website.
Cool, eh?
My favorite URL extension is obviously disabling personalized search. To do that, add &pws=0 to the end of your URL.
Beware, however: some of these URL extensions can be misleading. Some redirect, for example, to spam sites. Don't always trust every Google URL that you are given.
What are your favorite or not-so-known Google search extensions?
A WebmasterWorld member informs the community that he accidentally fell prey to a phishing email that he assumed was coming from the Google AdWords team.
While nobody else has been impacted by the email at this point, it's important to be advised that there can be such issues in the future. In the event that you accidentally succumb to the psychological powers of such an email, change your password immediately. Keep the email intact with full headers and forward to Google so that they can investigate.
Last night, I tried it out and it worked well. But this morning, it is not working. I hope to update this post with example searches when it is back and running.
In short, Google Checkout Trends uses Checkout data to show you trends in what people are buying and selling online. It aggregates the sales data from their merchants and plots the revenue (price x quantity sold) over a time chart.
Currently all results return "do not have enough search volume to show graphs."
This is not the first time Yahoo placed images near their ads. They did display images near premium contextual ads in the past. But never in a search results setting, which includes directory listings.
Loren Baker explains that these images are not clickable and are hosted by worthathousandwords.com, aka. ImageAdvantage.
We reported an issue not allowing AdSense publishers post AdSense Video units not only once but twice, dating back to December 21st, I believe.
A Google AdSense representative, AdSensePro Ashley, posted that the issue is now resolved. She said:
Thanks for your patience while our engineers worked to investigate
your concern.
I am pleased to let you know that this issue has now been resolved. Now, if your AdSense account is linked to your YouTube account, you can create video units by clicking on 'Video units' in your AdSense account.
Rand Fishkin wrote a blog post on the reasons why you must attend SMX West. Among his reasons: you can meet potential employees and clients, you can perform competitive analysis, you can brainstorm with speakers, you can test your elevator pitch, you can set goals for yourself, and applications of the right tip may increase your ROI. This works for any conference, really, and it should be part of any Search Marketer's agenda.
But why SMX West? Well, for one, I'll be there. Rand mentions that great people will be going, and you bet I'll be blogging from the front row as always. Rand argues that in comparison to other conferences, there's also great food (just make sure you prepare Kosher food this time, Danny!) He adds that the timing is great, the sessions are new (the lineup is revamped), three days is a perfect length (I like it better than two, especially since I'm flying cross country), it's in Silicon Valley, there's free wifi, there are great after-parties (really?!), and there's breakthrough content.
So if you haven't signed up for SMX West yet, do it. The deadline for a discount registration is two days from now, so do it right away! You can register at the official SMX West website.
Also, as you know, Barry (you know, the guy who runs this blog) is arranging SphinnCon Israel next month (February 5th). If you're a local or near Israel, you're encouraged to attend. There are representatives from many search agencies in the country in addition to Google Israel representation. It should be a blast.
Postscript Barry: Danny wrote a post on SphinnCon Israel at Search Engine Land, please make sure to check it out.
SphinnCon has a limited number of seats available, and the full agenda has been posted. I won't be there, so it won't be as fun as if I would, but you're encouraged to attend. If I could make it, you bet I would!
Keyword Expansion – we have included 3 different expansion algorithms: campaign association, fast contained, and category simulation
Keyword Search Volume Historical and Forecast – we have included daily and monthly keyword traffic data, including forecasting
Keyword Buzz – you can find buzz keywords in our 300+ verticals
Keyword Demographic analysis
Keyword Geographic analysis
Keyword Categorization
Keyword Monetization – you can find all monetization information (CPC, CTR, etc.) for your keyword list
Forum members are seriously impressed:
You weren't lying when you said you would love the tool. This is how it should have been done a while ago! WOW
There are other reactions as well. Dan Zarrella wrote his own impressions after testing it out. He's mostly reporting initial bugs as per the beta release, but it's a good read if you're also looking into the product.
Ever wanted to know the clear-cut way to remove URLs from Google? Matt Cutts shows you how in this video that was highlighted in the Google Webmaster Central blog:
Good stuff. I'm still not a videophile though. (My question to Matt: have you been inspired by Whiteboard Friday?)
Last night I reported Jim Safka To Replace Jim Lanzone As CEO Of Ask.com at Search Engine Land. In short, Jim Lanzone, who became Ask.com's CEO in August of 2006, to step up when Steve Berkowitz left to go to Microsoft, has been replaced by one of Diller's guys, Jim Safka. I hear very good things about Safka, he was previously the CEO of Match.com and he will retain his job at as CEO of Primal Ventures.
But the SEO/SEM community was a bit taken back by the shocking news. Jim Lanzone has been such an important part of Ask.com, since joining in the company in 2001 as Vice President of Product Management. He drove and lead the company for a long time. But more importantly, Jim Lanzone had a special connection with the SEM community, a connection that I feel no other CEO at any other search engine company had.
Barry Diller said it himself:
Jim Lanzone was the principal executive responsible for Ask.com's turnaround over the last two years. His passion for innovation and his every day dedication to the business and its people have been everything anyone could ask for. He is a superb executive and leader and I'm hopeful we can be associated in the future.
I don't know who left who. I just can't see Jim Lanzone leaving Ask, I just can't see it. It is just a shame.
A Sphinn thread shares some of the thoughts we had about Jim Lanzone and how much we will miss him. I personally felt he was the soul of Ask.com and accounted for a lot of the soul of the search industry.
Lisa Barone said:
He brought an amazing amount of energy and excitement to my favorite little search engine. It was always fun to see his face light up when you got him talking about what Ask was up to or their latest round of TV commercials.
Oh dear. I hoped that Diller was focusing on ASK since I thing that is the sole horse that should drive the IAC growth. The quote from the article isn't at all encouraging:
In his statement, Diller said: "These changes are intended to strengthen and streamline the operating structure at IAC, both leading up to our intended spin-offs, and beyond."
Giving the glowing description of Jim Lanzone given by Diller, this presumably means there was a fundamental difference on strategic thinking here. That really upsets me. I was seeing ASK as the David to Google's Goliath.
Yes, it scares me too. Will Diller start cutting costs and just try to monetize the engine, leaving relevancy to Google and others?
Kevin Heisler said:
Lanzone deserves Diller's kudos. He launched the blended search innovations that have transformed the industry.
Jim - we wish you much success in your new ventures. You will always be missed and we hope you stay connected with us in the search industry. We know that your new position as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Venture Capital firm, Redpoint Ventures may lead to you coming back into the search space - and that give us all hope!
But as we reported on December 28th, there has been bugs with video AdSense units that has been restricting many users from signing up. In fact, the bug was first reported on December 21st, and then acknowledged by an AdSense representative. The bug appears to have never been resolved.
A new Google Groups thread started on January 3rd, reports a similar, if not the same, error when signing up for AdSense Video units.
I am seeing "Your account is still pending approval" and underneath that, "Adsense error: An internal error has occurred. Please retry your request."
This time a different Google AdSense representative saw the report, on January 9th, and replied:
Hi all,
Thanks for updating us on this issue. I have passed on to our engineering team all the information that you have provided. Thanks for your patience while they investigate this matter,
Update: This is no longer happening, I assume some Googler accidently put a break in there and it got pushed to the main results. It is now back to normal.
Just the other day we learned Google was changing their AdSense referral policy. But we have reports that many Google AdSense publishers are already seeing these referral options not appearing for them. But many of those publishers are US based, so the policy doesn't apply to them.
This is likely a bug.
There are two threads reporting this, one at Google Groups and the other at DigitalPoint Forums. Here are some reports from the thread that confirm it is not just "AdSense Referrals" but other Google products that are impacting, and should not be.
Is anyone having this problem or is it just me? Today my adsense firefox referrals just disappeared and are no longer being displayed. I am located in the US so I shouldn't be affected by the new "rules" as per the adsense blog.
Recently I noticed the FireFox referral button dissapeared on my site, so I went into my adsense account and grabbed a new code. Works. Later in the day however the referral button dissapears again and this time using any code won't bring it back up. I thought it was my browser (which was FireFox 3 beta) so I used IE 7.
I am missing one Adwords referral button too right now and I in the US..
My other types of ads are working good though..
So it appears that some buttons are working and some aren't for select users. They all appear to be working for me.
Today we are having our first Google Toolbar PageRank update of 2008. At least there are dozens and dozens of reports that PageRank scores on the 72.14.25.x data center has been updated.
What does this mean to you? To your rankings? Nothing.
Tamar Weinberg in SEO Forum News at January 31, 2008 9:50 AM Comments (1)
TGIF! I can't believe how excited I am that it's the weekend. This week has been one heck of a rollercoaster. For more information, read 
